Dumping turtles in Lake Merritt kills reptiles, trashes waterway

Above: A dead turtle is scooped out of Lake Merritt by lake supervisor Emmanuel Entes, who speaks with lake visitor Laura Goderez, below.

Photo: Paul Kuroda, Special to The Chronicle

A popular breed of invasive turtles dumped in Lake Merritt and its tributaries are dying in the brackish water and adding to the growing problem of waste in Oakland’s waterways.

Despite signage warning that the water is a “slow death,” not a glorious turtle retirement kingdom some pet owners seem to think it is, volunteer cleaning crews regularly fish out decomposing red-eared sliders amid heaps of litter.

James Robinson, executive director of the Lake Merritt Institute, a nonprofit that removes trash from the water, said the releasing of turtles is an ongoing problem. People who buy them at pet stores don’t seem to realize they can live upward of 50 years, he said.

“At some point, your kids grow up and don’t take care of Timmy the Turtle anymore,” Robinson said. “People just outgrow them and then they’re like, ‘Be free, turtle, go be home.’ And they throw it into the equivalent of a lake of acid.”

The red-eared slider needs fresh water to survive. In Lake Merritt, a tidal slough where salt water from the bay meets freshwater from creeks and storm drains, the turtles undergo an osmotic process that leads to dehydration or complete organ failure, Robinson said.

A few might survive, but they become weakened by the saline water, he said.

Dumping turtles in Lake Merritt kills reptiles, trashes...

1of3Laura Goderez informs Emmanuel Entes, Lake Supervisor, of a trash can in Lake Merritt on Thursday, June 29, 2017 in Oakland , CA.Photo: Paul Kuroda, Special to The Chronicle

2of3Lake supervisor Emmanuel Entes rolls a trash barrel at Oakland’s Lake Merritt, which has become a dump for unwanted pet red-eared slider turtles.Photo: Paul Kuroda, Special to The Chronicle

3of3Gabriel Gipson removes trash from the lake, which is designated an “impaired” body of water.Photo: Paul Kuroda, Special to The Chronicle

But abandoning the creatures elsewhere is not a good solution, experts say, and they are better off at rescue centers. Red-eared sliders dumped in freshwater ponds or other bodies of water will thrive, but at a huge cost to the environment, according to Brian Simison, a genomics researcher at the California Academy of Sciences who has studied the species. Through their aggression and rapid breeding, the sliders — farmed by the millions in China — have decimated the population of the western pond turtle, native to California, he said.

Such is the case in Golden Gate Park, whose ponds are infested with red-eared sliders, Simison said. A new restoration project at the Presidio’s Mountain Lake, which has brought back native plants and animals, tries to keep the non-indigenous turtles at bay with netting and catch bins for pet owners looking to part ways with the reptiles, he said.

Owen Maercks, the owner of East Bay Vivarium, a reptile store in Berkeley, said he doesn’t sell red-eared sliders and sympathizes with anyone who has one.

“Most people buy them at a flea market or think they’re saving them from being cooked,” he said. “They’re not sweet. They’re not nice. There’s no upside.”

A few decades ago, Maercks said he noticed the same monks coming into the store over and over again to buy turtles. He later found out they were being released into the ocean as part of a Zen Buddhist tradition and explained to the monks how doing so kills the animals. The ritual appears to be less common now, Maercks said.

In Oakland, the releasing of turtles is just one piece of a larger problem of illegal dumping that has leached into the city’s waterways, Robinson said.

Between January and May, volunteers removed more than 13,000 pounds of trash from Lake Merritt, which is designated an “impaired” body of water by the Environmental Protection Agency because of its low levels of dissolved oxygen.

Regulators have threatened to levy hefty fines against the city if it doesn’t cut its storm drain litter by 70 percent compared with 2009 levels. Any penalties wouldn’t be enacted until after Sept. 1, the deadline for city officials to submit documentation on waste reduction, said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

“We’re in a throw-away culture,” said Katie Noonan, a board member of the Lake Merritt Institute, who said seeing dead turtles is a “disturbing sight.” “People think if you throw a piece of trash on the ground or don’t clean after your pet, the rain will wash it away. But the rain washes it straight into the lake.”

Kimberly Veklerov is the lead digital reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. Previously, she covered Oakland City Hall and the East Bay for The Chronicle, reporting on stories ranging from the Ghost Ship fire tragedy to the Oakland police misconduct scandal. She joined The Chronicle in 2015 as a crime and breaking news reporter. Veklerov studied economics at UC Berkeley and served as the editor-in-chief and president of The Daily Californian, the student newspaper.